O's finally win 6 in a row in their 6th attempt this season. Good to see O's fans taking over Fenway like the Red Sox fans have done at Camden Yards for years.

After a rough start, Thome finally makes his presence felt in his first game back. Hunter gets the win, topping out at 100mph. I know you can unload more as a reliever, but that seems like a 6-7mph spike over when he was starting. He and Matusz may be carving out careers for themselves as relievers.

Ironic that Machado ends the O's streak of 115 errorless innings. Thankfully the streak of extra inning wins, and wins when leading after 7 are still intact. O's are now one extra inning win away from tying the '49 Indians ML record of 17 in a row.

Sux lucked out in the 9th with that ground-rule double by Thome, but the O's looked terrible against Dubront. Andino struck out looking 3 times on the same pitch - not sure why he's the default second baseman. I'd rather see Flaherty there on a regular basis at this point.

Bundy makes his ML debut with 0.2 scoreless innings. They likely need to go 6-1 on this next homestand to have a good shot at winning the division.

I wouldn't 100% rule out the fact there is an institutionalized umpire-based repression of Baltimore success. I never buy into those conspiracy theories, and I'm not saying I believe that it's happening. But it has been a VERY bad season for umpiring for the O's, call on Teixeira at first notwithstanding. I always say these things even out over time. This year they haven't come close to evening out. It's better for baseball to have a bigger-market team play more postseason game, and no team has a bigger market than NY. I guarantee you that the league WANTS the Yankees to win the division. The umps don't care, though, and I THINK Major League Baseball has enough integrity as an organization not to actually tell the umpires "hey, we'd like these teams to win as much as possible, and these other teams to lose." But maybe a hint has been dropped here or there? Again, I don't think anything like that has happened. But I'm not going to absolutely rule it out, either.

Of course you think it's insane. You're a Yankees fan. I think there actually is some small extent of what I described, but not intentionally on anyone's part. You yourself suggested that whatever reprimands/discipline umpires receive occurs behind the scenes. I think it's entirely possible that the commissioner "incidentally" disciplines/fines/etc umpires more severely or more frequently for blown calls against big-market teams. That could be due to his own subconscious desire to see those teams win, or even just a result of the fact that the blown call will be hammered into his conscience far more aggressively by ESPN and the other national sports media if it happens to NY than if it happens to KC. That's just a fact, which you can't dispute. If he sees it 11 times before he goes to bed instead of once in passing, it's more likely to stick in his head that "hey, I have to do something about this." And then the umpires figure it out, and at least a few of them maybe start to get into the mindset that if they're going to blow a call they better do it in favor of the big-ticket franchise. Then on the close plays they'll inevitably lean towards the Yankees, not the O's. Probably would never apply to balls and strikes, and I'm sure there are plenty of umpires out there who are doing their jobs as well and honestly as they possibly can. But even so they might subconsciously be hoping it goes one way, and then maybe they're more likely to see it that way. And a few guys are always going to want to cover their *****.